Lee Fields knows what you're feeling

1of6After an unsuccessful attempt at a music career in the 1970s, Lee Fields worked in real estate before he experienced a resurgence in the 1990s.Photo: Davi Russo

2of6soul singer Lee FieldsPhoto: Davi Russo

3of6soul singer Lee FieldsPhoto: Davi Russo

4of6soul singer Lee FieldsPhoto: Davi Russo

5of6soul singer Lee FieldsPhoto: Davi Russo

6of6soul singer Lee FieldsPhoto: Davi Russo

Lee Fields had fish rather than soul on the mind in the early 1990s. Fields had stumbled through the music industry as a promising Southern soul singer in the gospel-drenched tradition of James Brown. He released a few golden and gritty singles in the '70s, but they sounded out of time for R&B that then was taking platform boot-sized steps toward funk and disco. By the '80s, Fields was out of music and into real estate, which brought the North Carolina native and his wife to a building in Newark, N.J., He saw the downstairs as "a fish eatery" with two apartment rentals upstairs. His wife had other thoughts.

"She said, 'Look into my eyes,' " says Fields. " 'What do you know about fish?' And I told her I know they taste good!"

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Fields, 61, instead sunk $20,000 into recording equipment and began the career he didn't have in the '70s.

Things were spartan at first, with Fields performing concerts accompanied by a DAT tape. "I don't know what it was," he says, "but down South, the ladies just went crazy." One night a club owner pulled the plug and told Fields to put together a real band. He did, and Fields has enjoyed an unlikely rebirth since then. He's recorded several albums in the time since, including the new "Faithful Man," a bracing, haunting, soulful and moving set of songs that offers the brassiness of Southern R&B with some of the sweet strings from Philly soul. It's all united by Field's glorious instrument, a voice that conveys love and longing with all the shades and nuances in between. Fields repeatedly credits producers Jeff Silverman and Leon Michels for building the album's sound.

If the title implies a certain piety, its self-righteous character is faced with a formidable temptation. "For me to sing that, I had to draw a very clear picture of this guy in my mind so it sounds real," Fields says. Fields points out that the song is open-ended as to the character's fate. "That's for the listener," he says.

The songs on "Faithful Man" aren't specifically about the hard times of the past few years, but in several of them, he portrays characters in desperate and difficult times. Fields talks a lot about confidence amid adversity with the characters, but every once in a while that line of conversation turns to his own life and career.

Fields grew up singing in the church in North Carolina. His father preferred blues, but radio reception was poor, so country music out of Nashville was one of the few options. "It was a well-rounded diet," he says.

His first single, "Bewildered," was released in 1969, with his aching and soaring voice dancing around a church-y organ. Fields issued a few other singles in the '70s, most of which have in the time since become desirable finds among record crate-diggers and DJs. Fields had a stash of his own rarities in a storage locker that he eventually let go of without retrieving his belongings.

By the '80s, Fields had a family and had given up on music. "It felt like the business was trying to break my spirit, and if you get your spirit broke, you won't be able to do anything," he says. "I wanted the music so bad, but I also wanted to be a good husband and a good father. So instead of music wrecking my life, it made me stronger. I thought, 'If I can't be a star out there, I'll be a star in my own household.' "

Which Fields did for years, buying real estate, until his wife talked him out of the fish business.

And as R&B continued its decent into plasticization in the '90s, Fields was embraced by a newfound listenership as something genuine. He's part of soul music's new old wave, or old new wave, a group of classic-sounding singers finding success years removed from their twenties. Sharon Jones, who has enjoyed a breakout during the past decade, sang in Fields' band in the '90s.

"There's really no new thing under the sun," Fields says. "All things that will be done have been done. So what we're singing about are the same stories with the same themes that were told back in ancient times. Things that sum up the human saga, the tribulations of all of us. And maybe people weren't finding that in newer R&B. Music is supposed to be comforting, some sort of medicine to people's souls. A record of this nature is supposed to take you on an excursion without going anywhere. You can find peace for a moment or feel like somebody knows what you're feeling."

Fields comes across as immensely grateful to have found success when he was old enough to make some sense of it. "I'm telling you, man, this is definitely a high point in my career," he says. "I've been through my own trials and tribulations. Fame now is so much better than it would've been then. I ended up with a real good family and I'm having a great time traveling all over the world. It's something I've been waiting 43 years for."

Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, 29-95.com and chron.com. He previously assisted the editor for George R.R. Martin, author of "Game of Thrones" and later worked on three "major" motion pictures you've never seen. That short spell in the film business nudged him into writing, first as a freelancer and later with Rolling Stone. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since moved to writing full time.